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Steady-state Physics, Effective Temperature Dynamics in Holography

Using the gauge-gravity duality, we argue that for a certain class of out-of-equilibrium steady-state systems in contact with a thermal background at a given temperature, the macroscopic physics can be captured by an effective thermodynamic description. The steady-state is obtained by applying a constant electric field that results in a stationary current flow. Within holography, we consider generic probe systems where an open string equivalence principle and an open string metric govern the effective thermodynamics. This description comes equipped with an effective temperature, which is larger than the background temperature, and a corresponding effective entropy. For conformal or scale-invariant theories, certain scaling behaviours follow immediately. In general, in the large electric field limit, this effective temperature is also observed to obey generic relations with various physical parameters in the system.